She didn't look tragic, to be sure--not as if there were livid bruises underneath her furs. And nothing about the manner of her greeting suggested that she was on the point of sobbing out a plea to be forgiven. Still, what did she mean by an errand? It might be anything.

"You see," she explained, "I happened to remember that you were going to begin studying law this year, and that you were just the person who wouldn't mind doing what I want."

"Divorce!" thought the half-back with a shudder.

"I want you," she went on, "to tell me just how you begin studying law--what text-books you get, and where you get them. I want you to come along and pick them out for me. You see, I've decided to study it myself."

It was a fact that the half-back was enormously relieved. But it was a brutal derisive fact--an unescapable one. He wasn't heart-broken over the dashing of a suddenly raised hope. He was, in his heart of hearts, saying, "Thank the Lord!"

If he had been pale before, he was red enough now. He felt ridiculous and irritable.

"Your husband knows all that a great deal better than I, of course," he said.

"Yes, of course," Rose was thoughtless enough to admit, "but you see, I don't want him to know." She flushed a little herself. "It's going to be a--surprise for him," she said.

"And, after we've got the books," she went on, "I want you to do something else. He's making an argument in court to-day, and I want to go and hear him. Only--I'm so ignorant, you see, I don't know how to do it and I didn't want to tell him I was going. So you're to find out where the court room is and how to get me in. Now, tell me all about everything and what's been happening since I went away. I saw you made the all-American last fall, and meant to write you a note about it, but I didn't get a chance. That was great!"

But even at this new angle, the talk didn't run smoothly. Because, precisely as the half-back forgot his terrors and the hopes that had prompted them, and the absurdity of both--precisely as he began to feel, after all, that it was a very superb and grown-up thing to be a familiar friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur, and wonderful clothes and an air of taking them all for granted--precisely as he made up his mind to this, he became so very mature, and wise and blase, modeled his manners and his conversation so strictly on John Drew in his attempt to rise to the situation, that the schoolboy topics she suggested froze on his tongue. So that, by the time he had picked out the books for her and seen them stowed away in the car, and then had telephoned Rodney's office to find what court he was appearing before, and finally taken her up to the eighth floor in the Federal Building and left her there, she was, though grateful, distinctly glad to be rid of him.

What heightened this feeling was that just as she caught herself smiling a little, down inside, over his callow absurdity, she reflected that a year ago they had been equals; that, as far as actual intelligence went, he was no doubt her equal to-day--her superior, perhaps. He'd gone on studying and she hadn't. Except for the long-circuited sex attraction that Doctor Randolph had been talking about last night, he was as capable of being an intellectual companion to her husband as she was.

That idea stung the red of resolution into her cheeks. She would study law. She'd study it with all her might!

She was successful in her project of slipping into the rear of the court room without attracting her husband's attention, and for two hours and a half, she listened with mingled feelings, to his argument. A good part of the time she was occupied in fighting off, fiercely, an almost overwhelming drowsiness. The court room was hot of course, the glare from the skylight pressed down her eyelids; she hadn't slept much the night before. And then, there was no use pretending that she could follow her husband's reasoning. Listening to it had something the same effect on her as watching some enormous, complicated, smooth-running mass of machinery. She was conscious of the power of it, though ignorant of what made it go, and of what it was accomplishing.

The three stolid figures behind the high mahogany bench seemed to be following it attentively, though they irritated her bitterly, sometimes, by indulging in whispered conversations. Toward the end, though, as Rodney opened the last phase of his argument, one of them, the youngest--a man with a thick neck and a square head--hunched forward and interrupted him with a question; evidently a penetrating one, for the man sitting across the table from Rodney looked up and grinned, and interjected a remark of his own.

"I simply followed the cases cited in _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_," he said. "I have a copy of the work here, in case Mr. Aldrich didn't bring one along himself, which I'd be glad to submit to the Court."

Rose gasped. It was his own book they were quoting against him.

"I propose to show," said Rodney, "if the Court please, that an absolutely vital distinction is to be made between the cases cited in the section of _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_, which my honorable opponent refers to, and the case before the Court."

Then the other judges spoke up. They knew the cases, it appeared, and didn't want to look at the book, but it was clear that they were skeptical about the distinction. For five minutes the formal argument was lost in swift flashing phrases in which everybody took a part.

Rodney was defending himself against them all. And Rose, in an agony because she couldn't understand it, was reminded, grotesquely enough, of the Gentleman of France, or some other of the sword-and-cloak heroes of her girlhood, defending the head of the stairway against the simultaneous assault of half a dozen enemies. And then suddenly it was over. The judges settled back again, the argument went on.

At half past four, the oldest judge, who sat in the middle, interrupted again to tell Rodney, with what seemed to Rose brutally bad manners, what time it was.

"If you can finish your argument in fifteen minutes, Mr. Aldrich, we'll hear you out. If it's going to take longer than that, the Court will adjourn till to-morrow morning."

"I don't think I shall want more than fifteen minutes," said Rodney, and he went on again.

And, presently, he just stopped talking and began stacking up his notes.

The oldest judge mumbled something, everybody stood up and the three stiff formidable figures filed out by a side door. It was all over.

But nothing had happened!

Rose had been looking forward, you see, to a driving finish; to a dramatic summoning of reserves, a mighty onslaught. And at the end of it, as from the umpire at a ball game, to a decision. She had expected to leave the court room in the blissful knowledge of Rodney's victory or the tragic acceptance of his defeat. In her surprise over the failure of this climax to materialize, she almost neglected to make her escape before he discovered her there.

One practical advantage she had gained out of what was, on the whole, a rather unsatisfactory afternoon. When she had gone home and changed into the sort of frock she thought he'd like and come down-stairs in it in answer to his shouted greeting from the lower hall, she didn't say, as otherwise she would have done, "How did it come out, Roddy? Did you win?"

In the light of her newly-acquired knowledge, she could see how a question of that sort would irritate him. Instead of that, she said: "You dear old boy, how dog tired you must be! How do you think it went?

Do you think you impressed them? I bet you did."

And not having been rubbed the wrong way by a foolish question, he held her off with both hands for a moment, then hugged her up and told her she was a trump.

"I had a sort of uneasy feeling," he confessed, "that after last night--the way I threw you out of my office, fairly, I'd find you--tragic. I might have known I could count on you. Lord, but it's good to have you like this! Is there anywhere we have got to go? Or can we just stay home?"

He didn't want to flounder through an emotional morass, you see. A firm smooth-bearing surface, that was what, for every-day use, he wanted her to provide him with; lightly given, casual caresses that could be accepted with a smile, pleasantness, a confident security that she wouldn't be "tragic." And on the assumption that she couldn't walk beside him on the main path of his life, it was just and sensible. But it wasn't good enough for Rose.

So the very next morning, she stripped the cover off the first of the books the half-back had picked out for her, and really went to work. She bit down, angrily, the yawns that blinded her eyes with tears; she made desperate efforts to flog her mind into grappling with the endless succession of meaningless pages spread out before her, to find a germ of meaning somewhere in it that would bring the dead verbiage to life. She tried to recall the thrill in Rodney's voice when he had told her, on that wonderful wind-swept afternoon, that the law was the finest profession in the world. Also, he had told her, he'd never been bored with it--it was immoral to be bored. It was a confession of defeat, anyway, she could see that. And she wouldn't--she absolutely would not be defeated.

In a variety of moods which included everything except real hope and confidence, she kept the thing up for weeks--didn't give up indeed, until Fate stepped in, in her ironic way, and took the decision out of her hands. She was very secretive about it; developed an almost morbid fear that Rodney would discover what she was doing and laugh his big laugh at her. She resisted innumerable questions she wanted to propound to him, from a fear that they'd betray her secret.

She even forbore to ask him about the case--it was The Case in her mind--the one she knew about, and as she struggled along with her heavy text-books, and a realization grew in her mind of the countless hours of such struggling on his part which must have lain behind his ability to make that argument that day, the thing accumulated importance to her.

How could he, under the suspense of waiting for that decision, concentrate his mind on anything else?

She discovered in the newspaper one day, a column summary of court decisions that had been handed down, and though The Case wasn't in it, she kept, from that day forward, a careful watch--discovered where the legal news was printed, and never overlooked a paragraph. And at last she found it--just the bare statement "Judgment affirmed." Rodney, she knew, had represented the appellant. He was beaten.

For a moment the thing bruised her like a blow. She had never succeeded in entertaining, seriously, the possibility that it could end otherwise than in victory for him. She read it again and made sure. She remembered the names of both parties to the suit, and she knew which side Rodney was on. There couldn't be any mistake about it. And the certainty weighed down her spirits with a leaden depression.

And then, all at once, in the indrawing of a single breath, she saw it differently. Now that it had happened--and she couldn't help its happening--didn't it give her, after all, the very opportunity she wanted? She remembered what he had said the night he had turned her out of his office. He wasn't sick or discouraged. He was in an intellectual quandary that couldn't be solved by having his hand held or his eyes kissed.

She saw now, that that had been just enough. She couldn't help him out of his intellectual quandaries--yet. But under the discouragement and lassitude of defeat, couldn't she help him? She remembered how many times she had gone to him for help like that. In panicky moments when the new world she had been transplanted into seemed terrible to her; in moments when she feared she had made hideous mistakes; and, most notably, during the three or four days of an acute illness of her mother's, when she had been brought face to face with the monstrous, incredible possibility of losing her, how she had clung to him, how his tenderness had soothed and quieted her--how his strength and steady confidence had run through her veins like wine!

He had never come to her like that. She knew now it was a thing she had unconsciously longed for. And to-night she'd have a chance! Oddly enough, it turned out to be the happiest day she'd known in a long while. There was a mounting excitement in her, as the hours passed--a thrilling suspense. Perhaps, after all, it wasn't going to be necessary to grind through all those law-books in order to win the place beside him that she wanted. If she could comfort him--mother him in his defeat and discouragement--hold him fast when his world reeled around him, that would be the basis of a better companionship than mere ability to chop legal logic with him. She could he content with the shallow sparkle of the stream of their life together, if it deepened, now and then, into still pools like this.

She resisted the impulse to call him up on the telephone, and a stronger one to go straight to him at his office. She'd wait until he came home to her. She had been feeling wretched lately--headachy, nervous, sickish;--probably, she thought, from staying in the house too much and bending over her heavy law-books. Perhaps she had strained her eyes. But to-day these discomforts were forgotten. Every little while she straightened up and stood at an open window drawing in long breaths. He should see her at her best to-night--serene--triumphant. The pallor of her cheeks he had commented on lately, shouldn't be there to trouble him.

For two hours that afternoon, she listened for his latch-key, and when at last she heard it she stole down the stairs. He didn't shout her name from the hall, as he often did. He didn't hear her coming, and she got a look at his face as he stood at the table absently turning over some mail that lay there. He looked tired, she thought.

He saw her when she reached the lower landing, but for just a fraction of a second his gaze left her and went back to the letter he held in his hand, as if to satisfy himself it was of no importance before he tossed it away. Then he came to meet her.

"Oh!" he said. "I thought you were going to be off somewhere with Frederica this afternoon. It's been a great day. I hope you haven't spent the whole of it indoors. You're looking great, anyway. Come here and give me a kiss."

Because she had hesitated, a little perplexed. Did he mean not to tell her--to "spare" her, as he'd have said? The kiss she gave had a different quality from those that ordinarily constituted her greetings, and the arms that went round his neck, didn't give him their customary hug. But they stayed there.

"You poor dear old boy!" she said. And then, "Don't you care, Roddy!"

He returned the caress with interest, before he seemed to realize the different significance of it. Then he pushed her away by the shoulders and held her where he could look into her face.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Don't care about what?"

It didn't seem like bravado--like an acted out pretense, and yet of course it must be.

"Don't," she said. "Because I know. I've known all day. I read it in the paper this morning."

From puzzled concern, the look in his face took on a deeper intensity.

"Tell me what it is," he said very quietly. "I don't know. I didn't read the paper this morning. Is it Harriet?" Harriet was his other sister--married, and not very happily, it was beginning to appear, to an Italian count.